“Advocates of drug legalization, think about that.”

Great point! Never would have happened without the black market created by drug laws. Nor would MILLIONS of other Americans been killed or incarcerated.

Dang! I’ll have to agree with Shep. Sorry, dude.

Mr. Preston, I’d say “advocates of drug Prohibition, think about the fact that you don’t see tobacco or alcohol dealers torching the houses of people who don’t like them”.

As for the NY Times, I never thought Blair was a singularly dishonest reporter. Someone like that doesn’t get as far as he did without an enabling culture. In my view the NY Times ranks one step above World Weekly News in terms of reliability.

So you guy are in essence saying that a drug dealer’s violent suppression of local critics is ultimately the fault of federal drug policy.

Ooooookay.

I would counter that in cities like Baltimore, drug dealers were allowed to roam free for years. Former Mayor Kurt Schmoke infamously treated the drug culture as an illness (as opposed to a law enforcement issue), resulting in skyrocketing drug use and the violence that always accompanies it. Baltimore had open-air drug markets on inner city street corners as recently as a couple of years ago.

The result was that the drug dealers, rightly, viewed the city as their territory. And to the extent they could, they terrorized the law abiding into cowering silence.

The Dawsons wouldn’t be silenced. They’re dead.

AOG, think for a moment about comparing tobacco and alcohol to the mind-altering, addictive illegal drugs like crack and heroin. Apples and oranges, man. I fired up a Backwoods cigar last night while I watched the rain fall. It didn’t permanently attach itself to the the neurons of my brain, demanding the next hit and crushing any and all social inhibitions that might stand in the way of getting that hit. It did little more than taste good and give me bad breath.

Surely it’s reasonable to see in drugs, legal and illegal, a sliding scale of danger posed to the user and hence the social costs involved in their existence. Alcohol and tobacco are reasonably on the low end of that scale, addictive to an extent but ultimately not as dangerous to users and society as crack and heroin, which are highly addictive, powerfully mind-altering and often fatal after a dose or two. As a substance’s threat to society increases, so should regulation of that substance. Right? Or should we just ignore social costs altogether?

And anyway, you guys missed the point, which is that the Times got caught lying, again.

We got the point, Bryan, but since folks around here are prone to quoting FOX and WSJ, we couldn’t understand why it mattered. And no, I wasn’t saying that the murders were the “fault of federal drug policy” because I don’t live in the simplistic world of the blame game. Policy didn’t make that scumbag kill, it created the circumstances where killings such as these were inevitable.

I’m glad to hear you’re all for government regulation to mitigate social harm. The fact is straight prohibition is a lousy way to regulate the harm of addictive substances, including alcohol and tobacco (perhaps not as dangerous to the invididual but doubtless as dangerous to society as crack and heroin - you’re not likely to exchange your stogie for a crack pipe if crack is decriminalized, are you Bryan?) Prohibition hasn’t worked here in Baltimore then or now, or in DC (where I used to live) or any place at any time that I’ve ever heard of. Besides, regulation of individual behavior that’s not directly harmful to another is (supposed to be) prohibited in this country.

Guilt by tenuous association—the favorite parlor game of lefties everywhere.

It matters when any news org lies, and it matters more when one calling itself “The Paper of Record” lies. If I catch Fox or the WSJ lying I’ll call them out on it. If you’ve got ‘em in a lie, spill it, but don’t just cite them as justification for ignoring the main point of the post.

Re drug legalization—Why did every civilized country on earth ban some drugs and not others? Why have most continued those bans? Don’t dodge those questions—answer them or this discussion is over. Why were illegal drugs made illegal in the first place?

Policy didn’t make that scumbag kill, it created the circumstances where killings such as these were inevitable.

Oh, I see. Policy didn’t make the scumbag kill — it turned him into a force of nature that was bound to kill.

A wise man once said, “A difference which makes no difference is no difference.

Own up, Shep.

Bryan;

In the US, to a large extent because of racism. Go check out the early “reefer madness” or anti-cocaine propaganda. Those drugs were considered “negro” drugs and there was a lot of hysteria generated on that basis. It’s quite similar to the way gun control laws were introduced. Additionally, of course, were the same forces that gave us Alcohol Prohibition.

As for the rest of the world banning various recreational drugs, most of them ban various forms of free speech and guns as well, and I doubt you’d consider that a valid reason to do the same here.

As for social costs, I’m certainly willing to consider the costs of drug use if you’re willing to consider the costs of prohibition (such as financing terrorism - e.g. FARC would not exist if there were no drug Prohibition). Moreover, you can only count the cost of drug use prevented by Prohibition. All the lives being ruined today are being ruined despite Prohibition - none of them have been saved by it.

You might ask yourself if you support Prohibition because it does good or because it’s against a bad thing. These are not at all the same and this is effectively the same question you ask liberals about things like welfare, affirmative action and public schools.

All valid questions/points, AOG. I support prohibition because it’s against a really bad thing, not just a bad thing (we can quibble over marijuana, where reasonable people can and do disagree and honestly I can’t keep my mind made up). And while it’s tough to separate which social consequences should go where, and it’s generally assumed that the War on Drugs has been a failure, it’s also true that drugs were banned not just because of racism but because there was a social toll that accompanied their spread. Tobacco, for instance, had been banned off and on in European history since its introduction in the 1500s (mostly because exhaling smokers appeared to be demon possessed), but eventually gained acceptance once it was shown to be relatively mild in terms of its effect on users (and demon possession was discounted). Tobacco came from New World savages (in the eyes of Europeans)—surely racism would have kept it banned too, if racism were the sole reason for prohibition of it and other drugs. For some reason, marijuana never quite overcame its bad reputation. Ditto the harder stuff. Why? Because they’re different.

While I regularly blast Europe for all manner of idiocy, I do think it’s significant that pretty much all Western societies reached similar conclusions about drugs, and at roughly the same time. Why would that be? Surely you can’t argue that racism drove us all to the same place at the same time, but caused us to look at some drugs differently from others though both hard drugs and tobacco had racial histories. That seems incoherent to me.

I think advocates of legalization face a choice: Educate the public on why legalization won’t lead to vastly increased casual use and to the social consequences we all fear, or shut up. Because the fact is, whether drugs are legal or not the harder ones are highly addictive, and that fact alone will create dependency and drive users to commit desperate acts to acquire them (just look at how alcoholics often behave, and multiply by about 100 for the increased addictiveness of hard drugs). Increased use will lead to wrecked lives, destroyed families and therefore more government intervention down to the very personal level. Users will have trouble holding down jobs, and therefore require more welfare. Having destroyed their capability to function, long-term users will become in effect wards of the state. Is this what we want? Whether or not we want it, it will happen. Do you want to see homelessness increase? Legalize drugs. Do you want to see an increase in mental illness? Legalize drugs. Do you want more people to become dependent on government handouts? Legalize drugs.

Prohibition at least keeps most potential users from ever touching hard drugs, and is good for that reason alone.

The War on Drugs…? Well, we shouldn’t call it a war, as doing so dilutes the meaning of the word. And we should focus on ways to make it work, and not just give up.

“Guilt by tenuous association—the favorite parlor game of lefties everywhere.”

Actually, it was a (horribly missed) point about hypocrisy instigated by the overwrought and sanctimonious use of the “l” word (sorry, I missed you scathing critiques of FOX and WSJ) but, never mind.

You should know that the reasons behind most prohibitions, especially drugs, are political. Annoying Old Guy is exactly right about the history of anti-marijuana legislation, except it was actually much worse. A horribly racist propaganda campaign created by a fed named Peter Anslinger led to legislation by a congress that didn’t even know what drug was it was proscribing (talk about abuse of the commerce clause).

If drug-use prohibition is such a reasoned government response, why are so many public health and social scientists so critical of it? And where is the explosion of lost lives in societies that have decriminalized and gone for a public health approach instead. I understand your knee-jerk antipathy to government intervention in people’s lives (wildly at odds with your position here, I might add) but wouldn’t you rather have government providing anti-drug education (fact-based, not the bull-shit propaganda they do now), drug counseling, etc., than having “jack-booted” federal cops busting in citizens doors, killing people, confiscating private property without due-process and imprisoning millions because of their choice of recreational drugs. It destroys all moral authority of the government to sell someone a bottle of Jack Daniels and a pack of cigarettes at an ABC store and then imprison someone else for smoking pot or doing some other unsanctioned drug.

McGehee, and even wiser man said:

“Do not rebuke a mocker or he will hate you; rebuke a wise man and he will love you.” —Proverbs 9.8

If you reduce all human behavior to a simplistic notion of “personal responsibility”, without taking circumstance into account, you fail to explain most human behavior. If I throw you in a pit with the planet’s last living tiger and you kill it to survive, did my “policy” play a role in your choice? So, what’s it gonna be, McGehee, love me?

It destroys all moral authority of the government to sell someone a bottle of Jack Daniels and a pack of cigarettes at an ABC store and then imprison someone else for smoking pot or doing some other unsanctioned drug.

So because one drug is legal, all drugs should be legal? A worthwhile rebuke must make sense, Shep. Yours doesn’t.

And since when did the government own all the ABC stores?

Wow, I thought I made it simple enough. Why is it you can’t understand the hypocrisy of the government selling you (how many times and places would make the point for you?) a product like tobacco which may make you 1) addicted, 2) sick, and 3) dead, or alcohol which may do all of the above and perhaps contribute to the deaths of innocent bystanders and then that same government busting down your door, shooting your dog, confiscating everything you own and throwing you in prison for simply possessing something less harmful to you or the society at large (say marijuana, powder cocaine, prescription meds)?

Even if it was more dangerous (though I don’t think very much is) isn’t that still a stark contradiction? What’s the principle here? The government will help you kill yourself a little bit but if you try to do a better job yourself, you lose all your rights? C’mon Bryan, what kind of “rock-ribbed conservative” are you?

I think the Times gets the tide tables right, but I could be wrong.